Review – LEGO Ninjago: Destiny’s Bounty Adventures

In Destiny’s Bounty Adventures, players will cooperate in order to defend their ship, Destiny’s Bounty, from attackers. You do this by Flipping an Event Card, Moving your Ninja, and Clearing Rooms. Each player also has 6 potential upgrades, and they also start with 2 of their 4 Spinjitzu Tornadoes. These Tornadoes tell you both your movement speed and strength—2 Ninjas with a strength of 2 each can defeat a powerful enemy as strong as level 4! In each scenario, players will try to achieve certain objectives, but Victory always hinges on filling up the Victory Track with defeated enemies and Mastery Tokens, which can be gained from 2 specific spots on the board. So is it a fun, LEGO-filled trip full of ninjas on the high seas, or should you stay in port? Read on for the review!

Review

Setup starts with the correct side of the double-sided game boards, putting the Villain tokens face-down, and choosing 1 of the 4 ninjas. Each have different abilities, but they all have cool upgrades that let you add more pieces onto their base plate or weapons into their hands. Players will then choose 1 of the 6 different Adventures, which increase in difficulty (marked with LEGO swords). After choosing the Adventure, you’ll lay out the Adventure cards, then shuffle the 6 event cards and place them on top of Adventure Card B. Once you’ve resolved the setup on Adventure Card A, each player will draw and flip an Event card to start their turn; once all the event cards are gone, you’ll reshuffle them and place them on top of the next Adventure card. This means the next player will resolve an Adventure card instead of an Event. 

After flipping an Event or Adventure card, players will move their ninja around the board, trying to stop the Villains from reaching the spaces with a skull on them. If Villains get to those spaces, their tokens go onto the Villain track. If this track is ever filled before the players can reach their goal on the Victory track, the players lose! The next part of a turn is Clearing the Room you landed in; flip any face-down Villain tokens, and see if you have enough strength between yourself or any nearby ninjas (you can ask for help if they’re a room away!). If you have enough strength, you can even defeat as many Villains as you’re able. 

As you add defeated Villains to the Victory track, you will also have the opportunity to get permanent upgrade cards or more Spinjitzu Tornadoes, both of which add more LEGO parts to your base plate. You can quickly go from a plain and humble ninja with only 2 strength to a powerhouse that can take on 5 strength enemies with the help of your upgrades!

Destiny’s Bounty Adventures would be a great game for kids, especially ones who are a big fan of the Ninjago movie or shows. The 6 adventures are challenging, but not so difficult or tedious that older kids couldn’t set it up themselves. I just don’t see too many adults taking a liking to the game since it doesn’t have a very deep strategy or replayability outside of trying out scenarios again with different characters. It is deeply satisfying to upgrade your character and see them tricked out with multiple attachments or weapons. I just would have liked to have seen a bit more LEGO in a LEGO game besides just the heroes. My only other beef is the game board itself, which doesn’t stay connected together; often we’d have to re-assemble it after just taking a normal turn or bumping it slightly. 

LEGO Ninjago: Destiny’s Bounty Adventures is a fun, light game with some small narrative elements that will appeal to kids, especially Ninjago fans. Adults might struggle to find depth here, but some of that will be made up for with the fun of building and re-building the heroes. Kids and huge Ninjago fans should check it out. 

A review copy was provided by the publisher.